WINTER
Footballers in the park grow younger, play
longer into December nights. In my garden,
leaves decompose. Fogs rise to the window.
I see my father’s features in the glass.
Gulls are grave, funereal in their white
seriousness. Bad weather visitors,
fickle as spume-flecks, they flitter from grass
into heavy skies, craftsmen in gravity.
Winter is too human for comfort.
Natural we should shudder as darkness
drifts in sooner. Ice seasons carry home
truths on incisive air.
John Huddart
January 7, 2014I see At the Year’s Turning has won the popular vote – and so it should, for it has both the threat of the inevitable, and the deft turning aside of fate by human love and commitment to continuity.
But here in Winter is the chilling rise of the enemy, that mortality within – “winter is too human for comfort” says it all so well. So I’m posting my comment at this poem’s feet, because it is right to be discomforted, and each of us dies alone, as someone once said. Actually my favourite line is “I see my father’s features in the glass” which is so rich in allusion and potential that it would be wrong to destroy it in discussion.
Thank’s David, for a fine collection, and a vision that it is a privilege to have shared.